


Touch

by calswrites



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21834352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calswrites/pseuds/calswrites
Summary: "You are not broken, Malcolm Bright. You will never be broken - not to me, not to Gil, not to anyone."
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 4
Kudos: 69





	Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song "Touch" by Sleeping At Last (lyrics are italicized).

_when will i feel this_  
_as vividly as it truly is,_  
_fall in love at a single touch,_  
_and fall apart when it hurts too much?_

It had been three months since the NYPD had rescued Malcolm Bright from the deadly grasp of the infamous Junkyard Killer. He suffered quite a few serious physical injuries, but what everyone was really concerned about was his mental state. Bright certainly wasn’t the most mentally stable previous to his kidnapping, but he shut down after a couple of days of torture. His body stopped reacting to the abuse that he was put through and he just absorbed it. People around him just assumed that he was alright – if he wasn’t giving them a reason to be concerned, why should they be? Malcolm knew that something was wrong with him.

_can we skip past near-death clichés_  
_when my heart restarts, as my life replays?_  
_all i want is to flip a switch_  
_before something breaks that cannot be fixed._

He knew because he had gone through a similar shut down when his father was arrested. However, in that situation, he was told that he should be opening up, that it was okay to feel whatever he was feeling. Now, Malcolm wasn’t feeling anything at all. He spent a week in the hospital to recuperate and while he was there, he didn’t say a word to anyone. It wasn’t until he was back in his own home around people that he knew semi-well, that he began to rebuild those fragile relationships. In reality, he didn’t know who to trust. His family had shown on multiple occasions that they would much rather have fame or fortune than a stable relationship with him and he had slowly grown to accept that. He wasn’t good with friends of any sort. He learned from experience that he ended up messing it up in some way, shape, or form. Everything always had a common factor: him.

_i know, i know – the sirens sound_  
_just before the walls come down_  
_pain is a well-intentioned weatherman_  
_predicting God as best he can,_  
_but God i want to feel again._

“Hey, Malcolm?” Dani tapped lightly on the back of his hand to bring his back from whatever had distracted him, which could’ve been any number of things. The two of them were sitting on the leather couch in his living room, watching whatever movie was playing on the Hallmark channel. “You alright?”

“Hm? Uh, yeah… yeah,” he said, blinking a couple of times to focus again. “I’m fine.” That was one of the most blatant lies that he’d been telling everyone recently, but Dani knew better. Her and Gil had been taking turns keeping Malcolm company so that if he ever needed anything, someone that he trusted, or at least used to trust, was there.

“You don’t have to say that, you know,” she assured him, letting her hand rest gently on his knee, making sure not to add too much pressure. “I’m here for you. Gil’s here for you. Hell, even JT’s here for you, Bright.”

“I… I don’t know what I am,” he said quietly, not daring to meet her eyes. Usually, his brain would be going faster than he could process anything, but now it was as if it had stopped working altogether. “I feel like I’m in… in some kind of pain limbo. I’m not okay, but I’m not hurting either. I’m not… feeling anything at all.”

_rain or shine, i don’t feel a thing,_  
_just some information upon my skin._  
_i miss the subtle aches when the weather changed,_  
_the barometric pressure we always blamed._

“I’m numb… a-and I don’t know how to make it stop.” He ran his fingers through his hair, a bit due to his frustration at himself.

“This happened before, didn’t it?” she said, rubbing small circles on his knee with the pad of her thumb. “With your father…” Malcolm glanced up at her, not remembering when or if he had disclosed that to her. “Gil, uh, told me… when you were in the hospital. We were really worried about you an-and he… I shouldn’t have said anything.”

all i want is to flip a switch  
before something breaks that cannot be fixed.

Malcolm paused, trying to process all the information that was just tossed at him. He knows that he should be feeling betrayed, frustrated, angry even, but he still felt nothing. He just nodded. “Yeah, it did, but at least then… at least then I could do something about it.”

“Hey, hey, don’t think like that.” She put her hand under his chin to direct his gaze to her. “You are not broken, Malcolm Bright,” she choked out, tears threatening to fall. “You will never be broken – not to me, not to Gil, not to anyone.”

_invisible machinery,_  
_these moving parts inside of me_  
_well, they’ve been shutting down for quite some time,_  
_leaving only rust behind._

“Dani…” His face softened as he stared intently into her eyes and watched as the first tear fell down her cheek. He reached up to wipe it away with his thumb, letting his hand linger for just a second longer than it needed to.

“God, I’m sorry.” She sniffled a bit, rolling her eyes at herself. “This is supposed to be about you and yet I’m the one crying.”

“No, no,” he said. He wrapped his arms securely around her, letting her be vulnerable for the both of them. Her small frame shook with each sob she let out although he could tell that she was trying to hold them in. “I’m here for you,” he whispered into her ear, letting her know that it was alright. He had been told that a countless number of times and it usually didn’t make a difference, but hearing it come from her lips was unlike any other time. He knew that she really meant it and he wanted her to know that he meant it too.

_well i know, i know – the sirens sound_  
_just before the walls come down._  
_pain is a well-intentioned weatherman_  
_predicting God as best he can,_  
_but God i want to feel again,_  
_oh God i want to feel again._

She let her head rest on his shoulder once she had stopped crying and the two of them just sat together. They didn’t need to say anything to communicate the level of trust that had just been built between them. Neither one of them paid attention to the aimless noise of the television. They were both studying each other. Dani was noticing the bruises that were healing and the scars that had started to form all over Malcolm’s exposed skin. She noticed how thin he was and remembered him mentioning that most food made him nauseous. She couldn’t even imagine what he had been through much less what he was still going through.

Malcolm was looking at Dani’s hand for the most part. He carefully examined the two gold rings that always sat on her ring and pointer fingers and wondered what significance they held. Who gave them to her – an ex-boyfriend, a friend, a family member? He tried his best not to profile her, but it was in his nature to be curious. His gaze found its way to her wrist where a simple black hair tie sat. There was a mark just above where it was currently from where it had been, and he could see that it was limiting the circulation. His fingers carefully traced over the mark before pulling it off of her wrist. “It’s not good to wear these for too long,” he said, fiddling with the elastic in between his thumb and forefinger.

She smiled a little bit and rubbed her hand over the marks that it had left. “Your hands are really warm,” she said, recalling the comforting sensation from just a couple of seconds ago.

“I think you just cut off your circulation,” he joked, threading his fingers in between hers. He flinched a bit at the chill of her hands but got used to it after a little bit.

She looked up at him to find him smiling. She hadn’t seen him smile in a long time. “Yeah, maybe…”

_down my arms, a thousand satellites_  
_suddenly discover signs of life_


End file.
